


And I won't bat an eyelash, dear.

by brianthomasofficial



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Here we go, M/M, basically trash i formed from a little au thing, i just did it to make people sad tbh, time to post everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-14
Updated: 2015-03-14
Packaged: 2018-03-17 18:55:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3540368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brianthomasofficial/pseuds/brianthomasofficial
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU where Brian found out about what would happen a few days after auditions, so instead of leaving Tim against his will, he decided he had to leave to keep people safe, even if he doesn’t want to (the first few paragraphs are more like an outline but it eventually turns into a fic-ish thing)</p><p>Brian goes over to Tim’s house the last day before he leaves, and asks Tim if he could share a bed with him. Tim is really awkward at first, but hey, it’s Brian. The person he trusts the most. He agrees, and eventually they end up cuddling for what little time Brian can salvage before he's forced to take off and leave everything behind</p>
            </blockquote>





	And I won't bat an eyelash, dear.

**Author's Note:**

> this is kinda old but it's quality so??? if you have any questions about it, just ask.

_Brian doesn't know what he was expecting to happen, but now he's running, leaving, tearing himself from the front door handle and the door is shutting just a bit too loud behind him and his ears are ringing and he doesn't want this._  
\----  
All is good and calm, and Brian is overjoyed that he’s with Tim in such an intimate, relaxed way that doesn’t remind either of them about any of the hardships they’d encounter. Of course, nothing good comes without a nasty aftertaste, and this on happens to be the bittersweet taste of nostalgia of which Brian has no idea about the source. Has he dreamed about this in the recent past? Yes, but he never thought it would actually happen. “Tim was much too shy for that” he had thought. His mistake. Admittedly, it also brings a much darker feeling of dismal ash that looms just outside of his vision. It feels like something is in his eye-

No, wait, that’s just an eyelash.

Still, the specs of fine dust seemed to grow into boulders, growing faster the longer he focused on that instead. Then it was a landslide flooding another part of his mind with anxiety and the sudden urge to forget about what he had learned. Brian knows he’s not going to get any sleep tonight…

He rests his head on the pillow for the umpteenth time that night, shutting his eyes only to have them snap open. What time is it? Looking over, seeing the digital clock on the bedside table flashing with a number that would grow larger by the minute. 12:49. 12:49. 12:49.

He unknowingly squirms as he waits for the minute to pass. Point and case.

12:50.

And the cycle repeats again.

12:51.

Brian has once again become aware of the fact that he’s sleeping with an actual human being that deserves much more rest than he gets, and he tries to stop the fidgeting of his hands.

12:52.

He isn’t even sure why this is such a big deal. Brian doesn’t know when he’s leaving yet, so it can’t be that. It shouldn’t be a big deal, right? It’s something about the feeling. Maybe he had already planned a time without knowing it.

12:53.

The light catches Tim’s hair in the perfect mess that it is. It’s extremely difficult not to gently wake him, to hold him and kiss him and hug him…Maybe this is what Alex was muttering about when he mentioned “sleep-deprived, drunken love” in the script. Brian hopes it isn’t.

12:54.

When will it turn to one-o’-clock?

12:55.

Brian realizes he has been clenching and uncurling his hands again. He tries to stop.

12:56.

Where would he go? Where would he stay? How would he avoid Tim?

12:57.

He’s not ready for this.

12:58.

…

12:59…

By exactly 1 AM, Brian is wide awake, the lingering clouds of sleep that had lain tangled around his thoughts dissipating and clearing his head. He’s out of bed with great caution as to not wake the other, padding across the room. Sure, Brian can keep quiet, but he can only hope that the pale moonlight seeping through the cracks in his blinds and running across Tim’s face doesn’t catch his shadow. Still, even though he’s rushing, the man pauses mid-way out of the room. He stays there, distracted by his partner’s sleeping form on the bed. Tim looks so peaceful, he notes; almost like a child…a defenseless child…one that hadn’t asked for any of this…

His own breath wakes him from his thoughts.

Shaking his head, Brian begins the hunt. Quickly, quietly, he feels around in the dark for his things. It’s not that much of a challenge. He knows the place well enough. 

Within minutes, he’s gathering the clothes and other items he’s been hiding away in discreet areas of Tim’s house for the past week and a half. Every heartbeat sends awful feelings of uneasiness and regret jolting through his body. Though he knows, he knows he’s already fully clothed and ready to go and that he can leave at any moment, taking one shaky breath after the other as he walks by Tim’s room, he has to stop. He starts feeling that familiar pang of guilt that sends tears to his eyes. Everything is hitting him as hard as a boulder all of a sudden. Will this really keep him safe?

Then he hears it.

"Brian…?"

Brian’s head snaps over to see Tim sitting up in his bed, brown eyes slightly wider than usual and his overall expression one of confusion. Oh no. He watches that same expression fall into a hurt frown.

"Brian…what are you doing..?"

He thinks- no, he’s sure that he should have left sooner. It would have saved himself the heart-wrenching goodbye. He opens his mouth but no words come out- his mouth is dry, so dry, but he can’t speak. he can’t lie to Tim…

"I’m…"

He trails off. Brian hates how his voice sounds so unsure and so untrustworthy, yet he can’t decide which is worse. That? Or knowing that Tim will most likely believe him anyway, because he’s his best friend and the only person he’s trusted in a long while. 

Brian settles on the former. Tim would trust him because of their strong friendship. The one he was throwing away to keep him safe.

"I got called in to work the night shift."

Tim seems to consider the reason, and though his eyes now show disappointment and the everlasting worry that he did something wrong, he nods slowly and inconspicuously paws at his covers with his nails.

"Alright.."

His eyebrows furrow, and he frowns again, looking away as he settles back down into the bed in disappointment. 

Brian is put in a rough place now- he can’t stand seeing Tim upset, but he has to do this to keep him safe…With a small sigh, Brian walks over to his side and brushes his lips against his cheek, tilting his chin up with his finger. His lips curl up into a watery, unconvincing smile that somehow reassures Tim.

"I’ll call you when I’m finished. I’ll be back, don’t worry.."  
\----  
Brian has been on the road for days.

Probably.

He's sitting on the left side of the run-down hotel room he had rented- straight across from the bed, back pressed against the white (cream, it's cream. Everything is precise. The color looks grey. Light blue? White.) wall, barrel of the pen pressed between his lips while he sits in the growing grey light of day. Brian isn't sure when 12 AM turned to 4 AM, or when 4 AM turned to 9:00 in the morning, but it must have happened somehow, somewhere in that block of time. Focus. Focus. He thinks he's supposed to be jotting down his next place to stay, but he blanks on the name. As he mindlessly lets his eyes wander across the columns and rows, he realizes that a majority of them are empty as well. The only dates with some scribbled marks of writing were the first three days of being on the run.  
After the third day, he must have lost count, he notes as he stares down at the near-empty planning book. Somehow, the thought rings in without a proper transition, it still looks new. 

Brian wonders if, just maybe, Tim is looking for him.

Tim had always been good at dates and keeping things organized. He had said it was because of the very little amount of work he had to do other than that, and Brian has continued to believe that. Brian wishes Tim were here right now. He used to match Tim's skill at planning before this. Before he didn't have time to write out every little detail and began running on a system of strategy and hide-and-seek with a shadow outside. One can simply turn the page from the week he left to the week after that and see how much Brian Thomas, the popular college student, has changed. Dates scrawled in messy writing become pages of emptiness and blank memories from the times he blacks out.  
——  
This same night, Brian wakes up in the same room as before, but he knows he didn't fall asleep sprawled out across the floor a few feet into his hotel room with aching bones and muscles. There's a digital clock on the bedside table...he can't read it. When hazy eyes clear enough to form nonlinear shapes out of blurry spots, there are many differences that gradually register in his mind with each inch further he looks. Now, he recognizes the numbers. 3:17. AM. Brian pushes himself off of the floor with a grunt, and immediately feels the blood rush to his head to give him a moment of dizziness. The first obvious difference is that his lamp is on- and he had never turned on his lamp. That leads him to the light shining off of the window to cast a reflection of the lamps glow against what is now a much darker, much later night sky instead of the daylight he'd fallen asleep to.  
Or maybe that's just the shaky, dizzy feel of his vision, blackened around the edges like a video game character peering through a hunting scope or a pair of goggles. He does a double take. Stars dot the near-black sky in harmony with the bright moon suspended from clouds above. It's night.  
This new, wonderful- oh so w o n d e r f u l, _comforting_ discovery ends when Brian smells the slowly rising stench. It's a thick, potent smell that makes his sensitive stomach churn. He squeezes his eyes shut and opens them after tilting his head down to investigate the feeling of something slick, something wet coating his arms and legs, smearing messily across his cheeks like some five-year-old Van Gogh. To his immediate alarm, his mind quickly goes to mud. Dirt. Oil. Grease.  
He's covered in the stuff, and now he's getting the aftertaste of what was most likely even more dirt in his mouth. He spits it out, not succeeding in doing much more than coaxing a dry cough from chapped lips. Raising a hand to shield his eyes from the light causes streaks of wet dirt to shine in the glow. to roll down his forearm. How did this happen? He knows how. He doesn't want to think of it.

He doesn't have the chance to think on it much longer before a glitchy whining noise hums in his ears. There's a crack from outside, followed by a long silhouette appearing behind the glass. Brian flinches away from the billowing shadow creeping over the windowsill and into his room as a figure blocks out the darkness with its own impenetrable screen of black. It's watching him. It knows he's here, it always knows where he is. There's no running that can keep him safe, only running that keeps him alive until he falls behind from exhaustion he can't fight on an hour of sleep.  


Brian is starting to think this has happened before. Fall asleep, wake up with grit on his lips, dirt and mud marbled sloppily across his body, clothes, face. \----  
It’s 2009, October 2nd. Your name is Timothy Wright, and for some reason you feel like something is going to change- whether it’s for the better or worse, you’re unsure. 

You walk by the phone. Your teeth snag your lip as that repetitive sliver of hope practically stabs at your heart, even though you’re painfully aware that that phone isn’t going to be ringing anytime soon.

People have been asking you about him. Even people you don’t know, approaching you with an “oh hey, Tim. Friend of Brian’s, right? Have you…seen him around, lately?” to which you would shrug and shake your head. 

You don’t like to talk about him anymore. 

But keeping quiet never completely dulls the pain, does it?

——

It’s 2014. Your name is Brian Thomas again for a short amount of time that you can call the last fleeting seconds of your life. You're back, and it's not like you don't know exactly what's going on because you had a front row seat to everything. This was how it would end. It had been planned out a long time ago- A sudden sharp pain in your leg pulls a heavy curtain over your thoughts, and you want to shout, but there's a ball in your throat constricting your windpipe. This isn't what he'd planned. Why are you still here? You have the sudden urge to test your freedom, but it only hurts more, knowing you can't go anywhere with two broken legs and a limited time for consciousness.

You almost hope Tim takes off your mask. But he doesn't. DIsappointment rules your gut, smothered by an unfathomable, overwhelming emotion you can't even register.

Throat tightening like a boa constrictor had replaced your skin, you're in so much pain, so, so much. It only grows as your body is jostled around in this link between your current area and another place Operator has chosen to dump both of you. It won't let him take the mask off. It won't-- it doesn't want him to.

You see Tim stumbling off like an upright sculpture made of stones weighing on a frame of straw, and it's obvious he's not coming back for who he doesn't know and doesn't notice anymore.


End file.
